David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies: Welcome

September 07, 2010

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Wyman Institute Update: March 15, 2005

Welcome to the newest member of the Wyman Institute’s Advisory Committee: Henry Morgenthau III.

A television and radio producer and writer, Henry Morgenthau III in 1957 joined the staff of the Boston-based pioneering public broadcasting station, WGBH, which became the flagship producing center for what is now the PBS network. His documentaries won Peabody, Emmy, UPI and Flaherty Film Festival awards. His work included creating and producing the landmark South Africa Essay shows during the apartheid era; thirty of Eleanor Roosevelt's Prospects of Mankind discussion shows; and the acclaimed program The Negro and the American Experience, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Malcolm X, hosted by Dr. Kenneth Clark.

In recent years, Henry served as a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, as well as president of Harvard Hillel. His social history of the Morgenthau family and the world in which they lived, Mostly Morgenthaus (published by Ticknor and Fields), won the 1992 Jewish Book Council award for best memoir. He and his wife, Ruth (emeritus Adlai Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Brandeis University) have three children and three grandchildren.

Henry is the eldest son of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who as Secretary of the Treasury played a crucial role in brining about the creation of the War Refugee Board, which helped save over 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust.
News About Wyman Institute Committee and Council Members:

A.   The Hon. Rudy Boschwitz, former U.S. Senator and member of the Wyman Institute's Advisory Committee, has been appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

B. Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, by Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Laurel Leff (Northeastern U.), has just been published by Cambridge University Press. The Wyman Institute is organizing Prof. Leff's speaking dates; see below. (To invite Prof. Leff to speak, please call 202-434-8994.)

C. Wyman Institute Academic Council member Dr. Alex Grobman was the keynote speaker at the Sixth Annual Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Conference, held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on March 8.

D.    Prof. Mark A. Raider (SUNY-Albany), a member of the Wyman Institute's Academic Council, has coedited (with Shulamit Reinharz) the new book American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, published by Brandeis University Press.

E.     All-Hebrew and Hebrew-French editions of Megillat HaShoah - The Shoah Scroll will be available this year. The unique six-chapter liturgical text, which will be read in many synagogues and public gatherings on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), was coedited by Prof. David Golinkin, member of the Wyman Institute Advisory Committee and president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. Last year, it was read in more than eighty synagogues worldwide.

F.    Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Zev Garber (L.A. Valley College) is serving as the Rosenthal Visiting Professor at Case Western Reserve University in the Spring semester 2005.   In February, he addressed the Public Policy Forum at Case on "Forty Years Since Nostra Aetate: Reappraising a Generation of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue" and spoke at John Carroll University on "Elie Wiesel's Night: Godworks." He also chaired and presented at a plenary section at the 35th Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches at St. Joseph's University, in March.

G.    Sister Rose's Passion, a film about efforts by Sister Rose Thering (a member of the Wyman Institute's Advisory Committee) to combat antisemitism within the Catholic church, was nominated for an Academy Award for best short documentary.

H.    Prof. Harry Reicher (U. of Penn. Law School), a member of the Wyman Institute’s Academic Council, took part in a recent panel discussion at New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage in conjunction with the television series “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State”; lectured at the Museum on the Nuremberg Trials to teachers from the New York City Department of Education Professional Development Course and the Museum’s Gallery Educators; and spoke on “From Nuremberg to Saddam Hussein” at the Westchester Holocaust Education Center, Manhattanville College.
Upcoming Events

March 28:     Thane Rosenbaum, novelist, law professor, and member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council, will speak at a Cardozo Law School symposium on "The Nuremberg Trials: A Reappraisal and their Legacy," on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the trials.

April 3:     A gala cultural event benefiting the Wyman Institute will be held at the prestigious Wally Findlay Galleries in Palm Beach, Florida. It will include a sale and exhibit of important Jewish artists, and will pay tribute to the Holocaust rescue hero Varian Fry, who, in 1940-41, traveled from New York to rescue several thousand artists, writers and musicians -- including Marc Chagall-- from Vichy France. Bella Chagall Meyer, granddaughter of Chagall, will be our featured speaker. More information: 561-655-2090.

April 4:     Prof. Laurel Leff, member of the Wyman Institute's Academic Council, will speak at the University of Judaism, in Los Angeles, at 7:30 p.m., on her new book Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper.   David Lauter of the Los Angeles Times will comment.

April 7:     A memorial service for the late Will Eisner, famed cartoonist and member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council, will be held at 2:30 pm, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street, New York City. The public is invited to attend.

April 7:     Wyman Institute associate director Benyamin Korn will speak at Weber State University, in Ogden, Utah, concerning Utah Senator Elbert Thomas, one of the leading Congressional voices for rescue from the Holocaust. For more information: 801-626-7325.

April 7:     Prof. Laurel Leff, member of the Wyman Institute's Academic Council, will speak at Nova University, in Fort Lauderdale, FL, on her new book Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper.

April 7:     Thane Rosenbaum, novelist, law professor, and member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council, will speak at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, at 7:00 pm, on "Ripped from the Torah: TV Lawyers and the Jewish Tradition," as part of the Nextbook series of Public Programs on Jewish Literature, Culture, and Ideas.

April 10:     Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff will speak on "How America Responded to the Holocaust: What We Know and Why It Matters," at 7:00 pm, at Xavier University in Cincinnati. For more information, contact: sweiss@huc.edu or (513) 487-3055.

April 11:     Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff will speak at the University of Cincinnati on "How America Responded to the Holocaust: What We Know and Why It Matters," at 3:00 pm.   For more information, contact: sweiss@huc.edu or (513) 487-3055.

April 11:     Cynthia Ozick, chair of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council, will deliver the first Roberta Barkan Memorial Lecture at Purchase College (SUNY), on April 11, at 7:30 pm. Her topic will be "A Jew Rides with the Cossacks."

May 4:     Wyman Institute associate director Dov Fischer will speak on "Did We Fail Europe's Jews During the Holocaust?" at the Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration, held at the Young Israel of Brookline at 8:00 pm. Cosponsored by Congregation Beth El-Atereth Israel of Newton, Congregation Shaarei Tefillah of Newton.

May 5:     Stuart Erdheim will present the first of a three part lecture series at Temple Emanuel in Great Neck, NY. The series is entitled, “What was done and what wasn’t done – The establishment of the War Refugee Board and the non-bombing of Auschwitz.” The film They Looked Away, directed by Stuart Erdheim, will be screened as well. (The next two parts of the series will take place on May 12 and May 19.)

October:     Irvin Ungar, president of the Arthur Szyk Society and member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council, will lead a Szyk Renaissance Tour to Poland from October 21 to October 28, 2005. Celebrating the life and work of Arthur Szyk, the famed artist and Bergson Group activist, the tour will visit Lodz, Szyk's hometown; Krakow, where he studied art; and Warsaw, home to numerous Jewish landmarks. The participants will take part in the opening reception at the premiere in Poland of "Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk," and will meet with high level Polish government officials, U.S. diplomats, and Jewish leaders. More information: http://szyk.org/szykrentour/index.html
Wyman Institute News

A. "Sudan and the Holocaust," a letter to the editor by Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, was published in the New York Times on February 25, and his letter about Holocaust denial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 4, 2005 ... A letter coauthored by Dr. Medoff and Stephen J. Solarz, former Congressman and Wyman Institute Advisory Committee member, concerning the Allies' failure to bomb Auschwitz, appeared in the Washington Times on February 20, 2005 ... A letter on the bombing issue by Stuart Erdheim, member of the Wyman Institute Arts & Letters Council, was published in the Washington Post on February 6, 2005 ... Dr. Medoff's letter about American Jewish student activists during the Holocaust was published in the January 2005 issue of Commentary ... His essay on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Holocaust appeared in the February 2005 issue of the World Jewish Congress publication Dialogues: Discussions Between Jews, Christians and Muslims ... An essay coauthored by Dr. Medoff and Wyman Institute associate director Benyamin Korn, concerning the failure of Russian president Vladimir Putin to mention the Jewish victims of Auschwitz in his speech about the Allies' liberation of the camps, was published in numerous Jewish weekly newspapers in February ... "Shylock & the Limits of Law," an essay by Thane Rosenbaum (member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council) appeared in the New York Sun on January 3, 2005.

B. Judy Selden, daughter of the late Harry Selden, a leading figure in the Bergson Group, has generously donated to the Wyman Institute a substantial collection of her father's documents and correspondence. Likewise, Judith Jaffe, daughter of the late Judge Michael Potter, a prominent Bergson Group activist, has kindly donated documents pertaining to her father's activism. The materials will be processed and archived so that they may be made available to researchers. The Wyman Institute is grateful to the Selden and Jaffe families for their contributions.

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